Gah. At what point does it become not okay to force your neuroses on other people?

In Richmond Kentucky, Kymberly Clem purchased a dress in the local mall. The following day, the twenty year old Eastern Kentucky University student wore that same dress back to the mall. Ten minutes later, a mall rent-a-cop approached her, made her turn in a circle while he “inspected” her, and then escorted her from the premises.

“He made me turn all the way around while he stared me up and down,” Kymberly said. “The only thing he said was that other people didn’t like the way I looked, so he wanted me to leave.”

The guard also said several women had complained because their husbands were staring at her, she said.

That’s right. If you turn the head of some prudish old church lady’s husband, you’re too sexy for the Richmond Mall.

Even the people coming to her defense are just not getting it, though.

Her sister Kendra is quoted in the article, thus:

“It’s discrimination and she has the right to wear what she wants. We’re just trying to make people understand that you can’t (discriminate). I think as Americans, we have the right to wear what we would like as long as we are not showing any private body parts.”

Why the final caveat? Why is there the presumption that showing “private” body parts in our society is inherently negative?

Similarly, a local blogger comments with the presumption that the body is to be hidden away, that nudity is intrinsically bad:

“It was short, but showed nothing that is illegal to show. Personally, I’ve seen worse on Eastern’s campus than what this young lady was wearing.”

“Worse”? Define “worse” for me. And why is your definition of “worse” any better than mine, or Kate’s, or Kymberly’s or Lenny’s Pizza Delivery Guy’s?

PITTSBURGH – Karen Fletcher, the Donora, Pennsylvania woman who ran the RedRoseStories.com Website, which the government charged contained obscene text pieces involving sex with and torture of underage characters, today pleaded guilty to six counts of “using an interactive computer service to distribute obscene materials.”

Fletcher, whose site had 29 subscribers worldwide and charged $10 per month for access – then her sole source of income – received, under a plea agreement worked out between U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan’s office, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen R. Kaufman and Trial Attorney Michael Yoon, both of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the Justice Department, and defense counsel Jerry Mooney and Lawrence W. Walters, a sentence of five years’ probation, including six months of house arrest with electronic monitoring, plus a $1,000 fine. U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti pronounced the sentence, and could have imposed as much as five years in prison, but the government agreed that such a sentence was not appropriate.

What’s really disturbing about this is that the court is deciding that written words can be deemed obscene, and that you, and I, can go to jail for writing down the things in our heads. We don’t have to act on them, we don’t even have to want to act on them. We write them down, we go to jail because somebody else finds them disturbing or offensive.

Not sexual images of underaged children. Not threats. Not descriptions of actual events. Just thoughts in our heads unapproved by the state. Under such a ruling, Lolita would land Nabokov in jail. Didn’t we already fight this battle? Oh yeah, we did. Timothy Sandefur has the legal dissection over at Freespace.

Most of all, given the fact that the written stories in question are unquestionably fictitious, it’s hard not to see these prosecutions as simple moralizing: as attempts, in the Osborne Court’s words, at paternalistically controlling the heads of the people who write these stories. Now, the general public may find such stories highly offensive, but that is not gounds for prosecuting them. Just about everybody has some sexual fantasy or other that they would be extremely embarrassed to make public—fantasies they would never act out in real life.

At a McCain event in Denver, advertised as “Open to the Public”, McCain’s Secret Service detail had Denver Police ticket, remove, and threaten to arrest 61 year old librarian Carol Kreck for attending the even holding a sign that said simply, “McCain = Bush”.

That’s right, in John McCain’s America, even little old ladies and libraries will be arrested for voicing dissent on city property. Carol Kreck had it exactly correct. John McCain does in fact equal George W. Bush, and that is exactly what this country needs less of, not more of. I shudder to think what he’d do to Ms. Kreck’s library, should he attain the power for which he rabidly drools.

It seems the Associated Press has decided that the doctrine of Fair Use should not apply to Bloggers who quote from its articles. To that end, it has unveiled a fee schedule for quoting it, which it hopes to enforce in a rather grimy fashion.

Here is the news:

The AP is offering up to $1,000,000 to anyone who turns in a blogger who refuses to ante up $12.50 for quoting between five and twenty-five words of their material.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Suspected terrorists and foreign fighters held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The decision marks another legal blow to the Bush administration’s war on terrorism policies.

The 5-4 vote reflects the divide over how much legal autonomy the U.S. military should have to prosecute about 270 prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than six years without charges. Fourteen of them are alleged to be top al Qaeda figures.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system reconciled within the framework of the law.”

Kennedy, the court’s swing vote, was supported by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, generally considered the liberal contingent.

At issue was the rights of detainees to contest their imprisonment and challenge the rules set up to try them. Video Watch how the 5-4 ruling is a major blow for the Bush administration.

A congressional law passed in 2006 would limit court jurisdiction to hear so-called habeas corpus challenges to detention. It is a legal question the justices have tackled three times since 2004, including Thursday’s ruling.

Each time, the justices have ruled against the government’s claim that it has the authority to hold people it considers “enemy combatants.”

You may recall the de-listing incident last year. The short version is that WP marked this blog and Kate’s (as well as others’ who cried out in protest) as “mature” (even if they weren’t). What that does is deny access to these blogs in the WordPress global category pages to all readers, even ones specifically looking for our content.

Clicking on any of the category links below this very post will take you to a WP.com page listing all the blogs that have recently blogged about something regarding that category. It’s actually a very cool service to find posts about the things for which you are looking, or in which you are interested. It’s very cool that is, unless you’ve been arbitrarily removed from that service. What that amounts to is de-facto censorship.

While WP is a privately owned site and I do not dispute the owners’ right to do as they please, it’s rather disingenuous of them to tout their support of freedom of expression on the one hand but deny access to certain blogs on the other.

Anyway, when all this went down, one WordPress blogger, a blogger who we found helpful and informative, a blogger whose blog we really liked, did not come to our defense. In fact, she came to WordPress’ defense.

In a Bad Karmic twist of fate, TimeThief (UPDATE: whose blog is now missing entirely) has now not only been de-listed, she’s been blocked from the forums where she had spent untold hours assisting new bloggers and answering questions as a volunteer. Dr. Mike, of similar stature and experience, has also been shut out. No explanations, no warning, no nothing. Just locked out.

Apparently, there were others as well, although I’m not familiar with them.

I think I’ll probably have to find a new home soon, so if the blog just disappears you know what happened. In the event that UDoJ is summarily deleted, I’ll leave word on where to find our new home at our old Blogger Blog. I’ve just backed up the blogs in their entirety, so fear not for the history. All the classic stuff will be preserved.

Somehow, a quote from more dire times comes to mind:

When the Nazis arrested the Communists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
When they arrested the trade unionists,
I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.

Forgive me if this post is a bit haphazard and lacking in the derision and disgust it deserves, but given The Boy‘s family situation I felt it was more important to put a post up than to give it the attention it really needs. Pop on over to Adam’s post and speak up.

As long as the subject of zoophilia is currently in the spotlight here, let me bring up something that I’ve been pondering for several weeks. In France there is an AIDS awareness campaign out that plays on our societal aversion to the “Ickyness” (to borrow a phrase from Skatje) of sexual contact with animals to make the point that sex can be dangerous.

Obviously the ads would never fly here. The modern fundamentalist religion movement has forcibly dragged the societal acceptance of rational discourse about sex and sexuality far enough into the closet to prevent the ads from ever seeing the light of day on billboards and bus stops. Visual depictions of sexuality on this level are verboten in public due to the appeasement by both our society in general and our government in particular of the medieval false-prudery of a group of people with no connection to reality.

Kyla Ebbert was minding her own business, catching a flight out of San Diego last July when some employee at Southwest Airlines felt it necessary to impose his Sharia-esque dress code will upon her. The outfit in question (seen on Kyla at the right) was cute and fairly normal, so anthrophobia (the fear of humans or the human body) seems to be the issue… Either that, or envy.

In July at San Diego’s airport, a Southwest employee asked Kyla to change her outfit — a miniskirt, a sweater over a tank-top and high heels — or get off the plane. Kyla had already boarded the flight from San Diego to Tucson. She didn’t have any other clothes to change into because she was returning the same day. After Kyla adjusted her clothes to cover herself up more, the Southwest employee relented and let Kyla take the flight. She concealed herself even more with a blanket during the flight, but was understandably humiliated by the experience. Ironically, after all, most observers thought her ensemble was no more revealing than the average summer outfit of any college girl.

Well, Playboy has done a thorough inspection of Kyla, just to ensure that she wasn’t carrying any WMDs.

A few little samples are below the fold. If you’re a burqa fan, a Christo-fascist anthrophobe, or have a heart condition, I’d strongly suggest you not click.

Well, here’s an ominous wake-up call. Usually Kate does a quick check of the blogs and the EMail and stuff over coffee long before I crawl my little butt out of bed (unless of course she needs a little attention).

This morning Kate came across this in my inbox, and thought it was important enough to awaken me.

YouTube Broadcast Yourself™

Hi janiebellemcknight,

YouTube user EricHovind has just subscribed to your videos! YouTube Subscriptions allows a user to be notified when another user adds new videos.

So from now on, when you add new public videos, EricHovind will be notified.

You can see who is subscribed to you by logging into YouTube and going to the My Subscribers page.

You can also subscribe to other users yourself. Like a video? Just click on the member’s ‘Subscribe’ button, located to the right of the video you are watching. You can also go to a user’s profile and subscribe to their videos from there.